Abstract
Upon the formation of the Sudan Civil Service its leaders set about to establish not only the conditions of service but the traditions and relations among its members and between them and the Sudanese. Salaries in the Civil Service were fixed and depended upon promotions and seniorities. Apart from the position of Governor-General and the special post of Inspector-in-General the pay scale was broken down into various categories.1 At the top were the Legal and Financial Secretaries whose salaries began at £E 1500 per year with a rise of £E 100 every two years up to £E 1800.2 Next were the Civil Secretary, and the Directors of Works, Agriculture and Forests, Railways, and Steamers. These started at £E 1200 and were raised £E 100 every two years up to £E 1500. In Category ‘C’ were the Sudan Agent, the Governors of Provinces, the Directors of Prisons, Customs, Surveys, Telegraphs and the Sudan Medical Department. Finally came the Inspectors — later called (Assistant) District Commissioners. A beginning Third Inspector was paid £E 420 per year, rising to £E 480 after two years. After fourteen years’ duty he would have been earning £E 900 as a First Inspector. this salary scale varied little during the years leading up to the First World War.
We were a motley crew, the British servants of the Sudan Government, with a wonderful variety of idiosyncrasies, failings, aptitudes and tastes. But no man need ever fail in his job or lack satisfaction in it provided he had the humanity to like and elicit the liking of the people themselves. Indeed many of the best-loved and most remembered officials were those whose affability or whose eccentricities imprinted them on the public memory and who were not rated in the confidential files as aces.
T. R. H. Owen
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Notes and References
Richard Hill, ‘Notes of Service in the Sudan 1927–48’, 20 Mar 1929, p.63. ‘Kosti is of course the Greek slang word for Constantine. The place was uninhabited before the railway came here but it was only a few hundred yards from the village of Goz Abu Juma. But Kosti, a Greek trader, set up his shop at the new rail—river tranship station and the local people insisted on calling it Kosti. The founder’s family still own the shop which he created. The name is Zografos.
R. E. H. ‘Robin’ Baily, ‘Early Recollections of the Sudan’, unpublished MS., 1909, SAD. The Diverting History of John Gilpin by Cowper describes the wild ride of John when he loses control of his horse while on a trip to celebrate with his wife their twentieth wedding day.
Robert O. Collins, Land Beyond the Rivers, The Southern Sudan1898–1918, (New Haven, 1971) pp. 287–307.
Wingate to Gwynne, 31 Jan 1902 in H. C. Jackson, Pastor on the Nile, (London, 1960) p.66.
The first proposal to build an Anglican Cathedral in the Sudan came from Lord Cromer in 1900 and was welcomed by Sir Reginald Wingate so long as the building of a church remained a private, non-government undertaking. Mr Weir Schultz was retained to design a cathedral suitable, not only to the memory of Gordon, but to the future of Christianity in the Sudan as well. The cathedral was laid out in the shape of a Latin cross and constructed of red and yellow sandstone from Jabal al-Awliya’ south of Khartoum. The architecture is an eclectic combination of Gothic and Byzantine design with all the solidity of a fortress. The foundation stone was laid on 7 Feb 1904 and the cathedral consecrated on 26 Feb 1912 by the Bishop of London.
The holding of religious services to British officials outside of Khartoum was strongly supported by the Governor-General of the Sudan and of the highest priority to Bishop Gwynne, who was literally an Itinerant Bishop. On 7 Feb 1929 his unremitting efforts to secure a railway car were successful when he dedicated the famous ‘Church Saloon’, a 47-feet-long railway-car half a Chapel and Sanctuary, the other living quarters for Chaplain and servants. In twenty years the Saloon travelled a half-million miles and held over 600 services. The Sudan Diocesan Review, vol. II, 7 (1950) 29–30.
Supported by the British Railway Community concentrated at the important railway junction and maintenance shops at Atbara, the church began service in 1906 when the railway headquarters were transferred from Halfa. For thirty-one years a building by the Nile originally intended as a Club served as the church where services were conducted by laymen who worked for Sudan Railways. Although a site for a church had been selected early in the history of the town on Church Avenue, the foundation stone was not laid until 16 Mar 1933 by the Rt Rev. L. H. Gwynne. Designed by Sir Herbert Baker and consecrated the Church of Philip the Deacon on 28 Feb 1938. The Sudan Diocesan Review, vol.I, 1 and 2 (1949) 21.
The Rev. Gwynne first visited Wad Madani in April 1900 where he stopped for two days. As the modern town grew the British community worshipped in the Church Missionary Society Girls’ School until the new church, St Paul’s, was built on an excellent site under the leadership of the Governor of the Blue Nile Province, Robert Bardsley. Designed by Leonard Martin of London and constructed of Jabal Moya granite and Soba bricks by E. Dentamaro, who also donated the white Carrara marble paving. Numerous others contributed their time and energy and the first service was conducted by the Rev. B. J. (‘Uncle’) Harper on Christmas Day 1930 and consecrated by Bishop Gwynne on 27 Feb 1931. The total cost was £E 13 000. The Sudan Diocesan Review, vol. vIII, 21 (1955) p. 13.
Richard Hill, ‘Notes of Service in the Sudan 1927–1948’, p. 91.
A lecture by E. G. Sarsfield-Hall to a Town Planning Conference at Welwyn Garden City, 1933, quoted in E. G. Sarsfield-Hall, From Cork to Khartoum: Memoirs of Southern Ireland and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan1886 to 1936, (Kendal, 1975) p. 102.
In the summer of 1904 Peter Lord who had been working as an assistant to Captain E. C. Midwinter, the Chief Engineer of the Sudan Military Railway, was sent to Suakin to prepare the old harbour for steamships. In August Lord and Commander Drury were ordered in the S.L. Clysma to establish a light at Sanganeb reef so that ships bound for Suakin could stand off at night since the thirty-five mile approach through the reefs could only be safely accomplished in daylight. After completing the foundations for the Sanganeb light, they were forced to take shelter from a storm at Shaykh al-Barghuth. Uninhabited for lack of water the harbour was far superior to Suakin. Lord and Drury conducted a survey, took soundings, and wrote to Khartoum and Cairo of its advantages. Lord Cromer was interested but let the matter drop when informed by the Royal Navy that Suakin was the only possible port. Later that year the Hon. Anthony Pelham joined Lord at Suakin and learned of the alternative harbour. He wrote to his parents of the observations made by Lord and Drury, whereupon his father took the matter up in the House of Lords. Wingate was furious and the young Pelham received a stern rebuke from the Civil Secretary to desist from any criticism of Sudan Government policy. But Shaykh al-Barghuth could not be so easily dismissed. When the Director of Public Works, Captain M. Ralston Kennedy Bey, visited Suakin to make plans for its reconstruction, he had heard about Shaykh al-Barghuth from Drury, visited the site and immediately refused to spend another piastre on Suakin. His intervention resulted in the inevitable Commission of Inquiry and ultimately to the birth of Port Sudan. Colonel Peter Lord, ‘The Birth of Port Sudan’, The Sudan Diocesan Review, vol. ix, no. 26 (1956) p. 29.
Richard Hill, Slatin Pasha, (London, 1965) pp. 72–3.
MacMichael, ‘Diary Selections, 1908’, 11 and 12 Apr 1908, SAD.
Richard Hill, ‘Notes of Service in the Sudan’, 14 May 1929, p. 74.
Michael Langley, No-Woman’s Country (London, 1950) p. 9.
Baily to his father, Nov 1924, Misc. letters, SAD.
Sir Reginald Wingate, ‘Memoir’ in C. H. Stigand, The Lado Enclave (London, 1923) p. xxix.
Sir Douglas Newbold to W. B. Kennedy-Shaw, 10 May 1939, quoted in K. D. D. Henderson, The Making of the Modern Sudan: The Life and Letters of Sir Douglas Newbold (London, 1953) p. 109.
K. M. Barbour, The Republic of the Sudan (London, 1961) p. 180.
Arthur Gaitskell, The Gezira: A Story of Development in the Sudan (London, 1959) p. 26.
Speech by the Hon. W. O’B. Lindsay, Chief Justice of the Sudan at the reception of the Chief Justice and the Judges of the High Court on 19 Nov 1954 in honour of the retiring members of the Sudan Political Service. The Sudan Diocesan Review, vol. 8, no. 20 (Dec 1954) p. 23.
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© 1984 Robert O. Collins and Francis M. Deng
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Frost, J.W. (1984). Memories of the Sudan Civil Service. In: Collins, R.O., Deng, F.M. (eds) The British in the Sudan, 1898–1956. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06960-6_3
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